


Kindergarten

by PaxVobis



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Autism Spectrum, Childhood Trauma, Dissection, Gen, Guidance Counselors, High School, Kidklok, Mental Health Issues, Metal References, Preklok, Second Person, Teaching, pet death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 16:27:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12257988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxVobis/pseuds/PaxVobis
Summary: Goretober #3: EyesTeenage Nathan is sent to the school counsellor.





	Kindergarten

**Author's Note:**

> _Cut my frog into pieces, this is my lab report..._

The boy's fascination with death was pretty alarming, to be frank, but not moreso than his career prospects.

Nathan Explosion, a junior, had been sent to the student counsellor's office three times that week alone.  It was as if they realised everything as once - but this was only the fallout from staffroom rumours; as soon as Mr Patton from mathematics was brave enough to make a move and send him up, not to the Principal's office where he has been frequently frog marched before, but instead to the counsellor. 

That's a big difference, you know, the concession that the boy was not just a bad boy in need of straightening out, which he undoubtedly was, but actually compromised.  Once Patton had sent Nathan up to the office with a blue slip instead of a pink one, and some of the other students had seen him crossing the quad with the teacher from Mr Osbourne's biology class, and those students had gossiped in front of Mr Osbourne enough to attract his attention with the name of one of his students, Patton had been cornered in the staff room and asked why.  Well, the boy demonstrates a consistent failure to complete his work.  He posited: short sightedness?  Dyslexia?  Have you  _seen_  him try to write?  My god.  Someone had to do something.

Mr Osbourne, referred to cutely as Buzz by his students, was very upset by the turn of events, the way Patton spoke about the boy.  Nathan was simultaneously his favourite student and yet his worst student.  Here was Buzz, leaning on his hand in the staffroom, lamenting over a black coffee: the boy showed such a passion for the dissections, he'd never seen anything like it.  Kids could come through declaring that they were gonna be vets or brain surgeons or what have you and none of them have the raw stuff that Nathan has, the curiosity, the intensity to pick up the tiny abnormalities in a gutted rat, essentials for such gruelling work.  And yet the boy was so thick, so incredibly stupid, he could barely write his name.  And yet, and yet!  Always and yet with Nathan.  For the stupidity was not a light out behind his eyes; there was a sharpness there, a scalpel.  When you explained things to him, he seemed to understand.  It just never translated into test scores, you know?

Dyslexia, said Patton, who thought he had hit the nail on the head, done and dusted.  Autism, said Osbourne, with slightly more sympathy, and lent Nathan the lab keys to study during lunch.  Ms Rosario, of English, wonders if it could be some sort of trauma?  Or bullying?  But Nathan was growing fast, a star of the school football team despite his social issues, and he towered above any student who might have griefed him otherwise.

After the first week of appearances at your office, the kid staring into your chest like he was dissecting you in his mind and never once making eye contact or speaking more than a grunt as you tried to talk about what was going on, what he might like to pursue outside of school, something had to be done.  You threatened to call his mother.  Nathan looked like he might hold his breath and pass out, paling around his flushed pink zits beneath his long, greasy black hair.

You called his mother.

Rose Explosion attended that evening, her boy in tow like a toy on a string.  She's an imposing woman - he always stands behind her, and back a foot.  You made him wait outside your office while you spoke to her, and you could swear he just stared into space the entire time, occupied somewhere within his head - or without the need to be occupied, perhaps, something primal.

Rose was a lovely woman, if a little intense.  Nathan was her only and she called him duckie, but my god, the likelihood of that kid becoming a swan was pretty damn slim.  When you explained your concerns the floodgates crashed open.  Oh no, her poor little man!  She tells him to study but god only knows what he's doing in his room instead!  She grounds him.  She bans him from playing video games.  And still it seems like he's just staring at the walls!  Oh, gosh, do you think it's marijuana?  Rose really wondered and wondered aloud if it's marijuana....!  You know!  The Devil's Lettuce...!

You conceded that that... could be part of the problem, but that the teachers hadn’t mentioned it and they had concerns of their own.  Maybe a learning disorder.  Rose did not take that well, she became defensive and aggressive at the suggestion her little soldier might be broken.  There is nothing wrong with Nathan if he could only apply himself you know?  You asked her if he'd always been like this, considering his relatively recent transfer to your school.  Well, he's always been a troublesome child.  A very quiet child.  But this was the first she'd heard of a  _learning disorder!_ Really, don't you think they go a bit crazy with that psychologist... business... excuse her French...  _bulldust_... these days... they're just children... can't they just.... let them be children you know...

You told her, cautiously as you know how sometimes this goes but not picking up any hint that Rose was _dangerous_ so much as a little overbearing in her love, about Ms Rosario’s concern that he might be struggling with... you know... something bad that has happened to him, perhaps.  Does Rose know of anything?  You hadn’t been prepared for Rose to think of too much, especially after loudly denying there was anything.  But you don’t think it could be moving around those military bases, do you?  Or the video games, you know there’s a lot of shooting in those things these days!  Or violent rock music, it upsets Rose but it really seems to make Nathan so much happier! 

She doesn’t know what to do.  She can’t think of anything it might be, except for bullying, or his dog getting run over in their driveway and Oscar had to reverse the four wheel drive off of the poor thing while Nathan was in the car with him!  Or you remember that truck accident back in Port Charlotte, that terrible thing, all those poor kids – well –

In the end, Rose agreed to have a talk with him and attempt to work on his homework.  But nothing changed, it was just more obvious now you’d all seen it.  And so long as he wouldn’t talk to you, there was nothing you could do.

Mr Osbourne, as intimidating as he might have seemed with his gruffness and explosion of white hair, was ever a bleeding heart and agreed to do what he could.  He was the only teacher outside his coach that Nathan would listen to, and by chatting with him across the classroom over a scalpel wedged into a bull’s eyeball during lunchtime, Buzz slowly managed to get the boy to open up. 

Nathan didn’t know what he wanted to do for a career, and he couldn’t explain why he didn’t pass anything.  He said he did study but didn’t see the point.  He used a lot of curse words.  He was not upset by the bus incident, said it was pretty cool, actually.  The only things he enjoyed were football and death metal, a music scene blossoming in the neighbouring city of Tampa.  Nathan was in a band with some of his friends, and when they got their licences, they were going to drive to the city and play.  It was gonna be fucking great.  Oh, uh... sorry, Mr Osbourne.

Buzz said to him, well, do you want to do something with this?  Indicating to the slit eyeball, the silvery insides glistening up at them.  Nathan didn’t know.  Maybe.  I mean, it was pretty cool.  They talked carefully, from opposite sides of the classroom.  Maybe a veterinarian, did Nathan like animals?  Uhhhhh.  Okay, well, how about a surgeon?  No, scrap that, there was no way Nathan could muster any kind of bedside manner.  Buzz had just about given up and remarked dryly, what about a mortician?  Or in autopsies... but that had piqued Nathan’s attention.  He wouldn’t mind doing that.  And he had the build for dealing with bodies.

This was the first breakthrough any of you had had with the kid, and you urged Osbourne to milk it for all it was worth.  The next thing you knew, Nathan was in there every lunch period, convinced by the teacher that even if he couldn’t learn the normal way if he just worked hard enough he could retain what he needed to pass the tests, graduate high school, and get into a mortician’s internship.  Work his way up from there, since his knowledge of anatomy was clearly _present_ even if he couldn’t spell shit.  Hours and hours of it, Nathan at a desk in an empty classroom and the exhausted Buzz at his desk, his square hands laced in front of him.  Okay.  Now write it a hundred times.  The pen nearly tearing the paper with each ham fisted letter.  Memorisation by force.  It was the last thing they had, or else hold him back a year.

But Nathan failed the exam anyway, and the last you heard of him, he was dropping out.  Fuck football or whatever.  Tampa awaited.

You couldn’t help but feel the school had failed him.  Everyone had failed him.  Even Buzz, who meant well but only caused him the agony of feeling stupid and all this useless work, and his mother, who adored him but couldn’t see past her own love to the flawed person Nathan was, had failed him.  You definitely had.  But there were always kids dropping out of the system, and sometimes, no matter how hard you tried, you had to concede that it was always going to happen.  Some kids just couldn’t be helped.

Life happened.  You got married, moved up to Jacksonville.  Careers have funny ways of taking you places, and when you came back to Port Richey you were auditing another counsellor.  Things had changed at the little school, more kids for a start, but some things stayed perennially the same.  Patton was still working there, still yelling at children over his classroom and flicking chalk at them, even though the chalk boards themselves had been dismantled long ago.  Terrifying to see he kept the sticks lined up on his desk just for the occasion.  A bit jowlier now but as intense as ever, greeting you with a mocking glee when you entered the staffroom.  Too good for us, hey?

You felt compelled to ask him if Mr Osbourne was still working there.  No, a sombre headshake.  Buzz is retired, he got paralysed from the neck down at one of those metal concerts down in Tampa, you know.  You are sceptical at first, but Osbourne was a bit of a character and you’ve heard of great tragedies befalling people at those concerts.  Patton widened his eyes at you.  I know!  Crazy, right?  He pushed that kid through so much, goes down to Tampa to see his little band and wham.  Straight into a chair.  Hideous really, a rack of lights collapsed, crushed the entire first row.

That kid?  You were oblivious to it.  Patton looked genuinely surprised at your reaction.

Don’t you know?  Nathan Explosion, he’s in Dethklok!

And that was a name you knew.  Funny how things turned out.


End file.
